The moon may have far more lunar craters than previously known

(CNN) Moon craters formed when meteorites and asteroids slammed into the lunar surface. Like fossils on Earth, they reveal something about the history of the solar system and how planets were formed.

That’s far more than the 9,137 officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union and largely detected manually using elevation information and images, the study said. Using artificial intelligence, Chinese scientists have estimated that there are more than 100,000 craters on the moon, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.That’s far more than the 9,137 officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union and largely detected manually using elevation information and images, the study said.

The scientists, using data on 7,895 previously identified craters and 1,411 dated craters, were able to apply machine learning to train a deep neural network. With information from China’s first and second lunar orbiters – Chang’e 1 and Chang’e 2 – the network identified 109,956 new craters. The two unmanned spacecraft launched in 2007 and 2010, respectively.

Using artificial intelligence, Chinese scientists identified over 109,000 previously unrecognized lunar craters on the moon’s surface. The moon is shown here, as seen from Buenos Aires on December 21.

“Impact craters (are) the most diagnostic features of the lunar surface. That is in great contrast to the surface of the Earth. It is very difficult to trace the Earth’s history of being impacted by asteroids and comets over the past 4 billion years,” said study author Chen Yang, of the College of Earth Sciences at Jilin University and the Key Laboratory of Lunar and Deep Space Exploration at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“Earth and the moon have been struck by the same impactor population over time, but large lunar craters have experienced limited degradation over billions of years. Therefore, lunar impact craters can trace the evolution of the Earth,” she said via email.